


North Star

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Borderline Personality Disorder, Borderline crack, Crack, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I guess this is crack, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: “I want you to tell me what to do,” Dex told him, struggling to sit up. “I want you to teach me how to be like you. How to be good.”“What the hell,” Daredevil said. It was too flat to be a question.(Or: Dex loses his job before season two, decides Daredevil is his new moral lodestone, and fixes basically everything. Matt's more or less just along for the ride.)
Relationships: Lester | Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter & Matt Murdock
Comments: 15
Kudos: 99





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I have a little experience with personality disorders/BPD and I’ve done some research, but Dex is definitely… not my normal narrator. So. If I get something horribly wrong, please let me know.  
> Also, I haven’t read the comics.
> 
> A/N: Yes, I have a ton of homework. Why do you ask?  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and feedback makes my day :)

“What?” Dex stared at Agent Cairo. 

“I’m sorry, Dex,” she said. “But there has been an internal review of your… your actions, and we need to request your resignation.”

“I killed him to save lives!”

“I know,” Cairo murmured. Her voice sounded sincerely regretful, but there was something in her eyes Dex didn’t like. “And, again, I’m sorry. You’re a good agent, Dex. But the decision has been made.”

Dex let his eyes fall to Cairo’s throat. It would be so easy to just reach out and crush her windpipe, maybe rip her throat open so that the blood splattered across her desk.

So easy.

His fingers flexed.

“Your badge, please, Dex,” Cairo said. 

Dex tore his eyes away, tossed his badge on the table, and left. 

He got drunk and destroyed half his apartment that night. Dex thought about breaking Dr. Mercer’s tapes, too, since all of her advice had come to this, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to.

Dex blindly put one of the middle tapes into his walkman and sat on his kitchen floor, listening, until the tape ran out. 

He listened to the hissing of the static for another hour. 

Dex made himself move and left his apartment around midnight. Not that there was any point to it, but he thought maybe he could find a fight somewhere, maybe find something to make him forget the gaping nothingness in his chest. 

People steered clear of him, though. Dex was of the opinion that people were, in general, idiots, but sometimes some survival instinct emerged in even the dumbest of them. 

Dex had been walking for an hour or so when he came into Hell’s Kitchen. He heard the yells not long after and broke into a run.

He found the fight in an alleyway. There were four men armed with an assortment of knives circling a man dressed in a strange red and black outfit.

 _Daredevil_ , Dex realized. He’d heard about the vigilante in the news, of course-- who hadn’t?-- but Dex had never seen him personally. 

As Dex watched, the four men attacked, and Daredevil began to fight. 

The vigilante was impressive. He moved like a dancer and hit like a boxer. 

Daredevil did a backflip to kick a switchblade out of a man’s hands. Dex revised his assessment to include _acrobatic tendencies_.

Daredevil made short work of his attackers. He knocked out the last of them and stood slowly.

The vigilante’s lips were peeled back in a blood-stained smile that made the hair on the back of Dex’s neck stand up.

 _You just need a North Star_ , Dr. Mercer reminded him. 

“You looking for something?” Daredevil growled. 

“Nah, I think I found it,” Dex said. 

Daredevil tilted his head, shrugged, and started towards the wall at a run. 

“Wait!”

The vigilante paused. 

“I want to be like you,” Dex said. 

Daredevil snorted and climbed up the wall with the ease of a spider. Dex tried to follow, but Daredevil left him behind effortlessly.

Dex didn’t mind too much. He had a new North Star, even if Daredevil didn’t seem interested. 

He’d just have to prove himself worthy of the vigilante’s attention. 

Three nights later, Dex ended up thrown into a dumpster.

 _This was not part of the plan_ , he thought.

Dex passed out.

He woke up on someone’s couch, handcuffed.

There was a woman standing over him with a wary expression and a gun in her hand. 

“Um,” Dex said. “Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I called Daredevil,” she blurted. “He can deal with you. You aren’t my problem.”

Dex looked down. The knife wounds he’d sustained have been stitched up neatly.

“Why did you help me?”

The woman sighed and massaged her temples with the hand not holding her gun. “Because I’ve got a soft spot for idiots, apparently. Even idiots who kill people.”

“They deserved it.”

The woman sighed again. “Like I said. Daredevil can deal with you.”

Dex shrugged and winced. 

Daredevil knocked on the apartment window. The woman unlocked it and let him in.

The vigilante strode over to Dex with menace in every line of his body. The eyes of his helmet glinted red.

“You’re the one who tried to follow me. The one who’s been killing people.”

Dex nods. “Yeah. I wanted to get your attention.”

“By killing people?” Daredevil snarls.

The woman who had helped Dex was backing away.

“No,” Dex said, puzzled. “I wanted to show you that I was worthy of learning from you.”

Daredevil stopped in his tracks. 

“I want you to tell me what to do,” Dex told him, struggling to sit up. “I want you to teach me how to be like you. How to be good.”

“What the hell,” Daredevil said. It was too flat to be a question.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not entirely sure what to call this. But here it is.

“Okay,” Daredevil sighed. “If we’re going to do this, here’s the first rule: you don’t kill people.”

“What if they deserve it?”

Daredevil sighed again.

He did a lot of sighing around Dex. 

“Look,” Dex said, shoving the New York Post in front of Daredevil. The rooftop was dim, but he thought the light was good enough to see the headline. “We made the front page. They’re calling me Bullseye.”

“I, uh.” Daredevil coughed. “I’m blind. But that’s cool, Dex.”

“Oh.” Dex thought about that. “Can I help with that when we’re out?”

Daredevil smiled. It was his soft smile, not his devil’s smile. “I’ll let you know. Thank you.”

“My name’s Matt,” Daredevil said as Dex stitched up his shoulder. “Guess you might as well know, considering everything.”

Dex kept stitching. 

Dex bounced a chunk of brick off the chimney Castle had chained Matt to. It ricocheted and nailed Castle in the back of the head.

“I didn’t kill him,” Dex informed Matt as he unwound the chains.

“I’m proud of you, Dex,” Matt told him. 

Dex held onto that memory.

“Matthew,” Elektra purred. She circled Dex with a predatory gleam in her eyes. “You didn’t tell me you’ve started taking in strays.”

“Maybe because I haven’t told you anything in five years,” Matt snapped. 

Dex elected to stay out of it.

He ended up being dragged into it anyway. 

“You can’t miss your trial, Matt,” Dex told Matt. “You’re always saying you have to keep your word, and you promised.”

Matt hesitated. 

“I’ll go,” Dex said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Dex was not, in fact, sure.

But Matt was his North Star. Matt was his order, his purpose, his guiding light. 

Dex was going to take care of him.

“Why do you care if I kill Stick?” Elektra spat, struggling against the handcuffs Dex had snapped onto her wrists.

Dex grimly kept dragging her along. Stick followed at a careful distance. “Because Matt wouldn’t want you to.”

“You just don’t think for yourself, is that it?”

Dex shrugged. “I think for myself. But I don’t care about things. Not like I should. So Matt tells me what I should care about.”

“You’re a psychopath,” Elektra realized. 

Dex shrugged again. “More or less, yeah. But I’m doing what’s right.”

Dex threw a knife through Nobu’s skull.

“Dex,” Matt chided.

“He won’t stay dead,” Dex protested.

“He’s got a point,” Elektra admitted. 

Then they were fighting again.

“Why did you pick me?” Matt asked, seemingly at random. “What made you choose me, Dex?”

Dex looked over at his guiding light. They were perched on top of a church. Dex was watching for trouble; Matt was listening for it.

“Because you’re a good man,” Dex said. “But you’ve got the devil inside of you. You just control it well.”

The smile Dex got in response wasn’t Matt’s-- it was Daredevil’s.

“Trouble on the docks,” Matt said suddenly, angling his head. “Let’s go.”

Dex followed Matt over the rooftops.

He spent most of his time following in Matt’s footsteps.

_ North Star,  _ Dr. Mercer whispered, and Dex smiled as he headed for the sound of screams.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the anon who gave me the hilarious image of Foggy and Dex interacting.

Dex knocked on the apartment door with vague trepidation, since he had no idea what to expect. Matt was leaning on Dex’s shoulder more heavily with every passing minute, though, and Matt had insisted they come here. 

A man with long hair opened the door holding a baseball bat. He stared at the two of them. 

“Foggy, this is Dex,” Matt said. Dex smiled. 

Foggy flinched slightly.

Dex realized there was probably still blood on his teeth and closed his mouth. He’d made out better than Matt had in their most recent fight-- Matt had pulled a typical Matthew Murdock move and gone in before Dex noticed he was going-- but Dex had still taken some solid hits. 

“Matt,” Foggy said. “What the hell.”

“He kind of adopted me,” Matt mumbled. “Can we come in? I think my shoulder’s dislocated.”

“And you came here?” Foggy demanded. 

Matt shrugged sheepishly and yelped in pain. Dex rolled his eyes and readjusted his grip.

“Claire’s in Hawaii,” Dex explained. 

Foggy sighed but stepped out of the doorway. 

Matt skidded to a stop in front of Foggy, five minutes before Frank’s trial was due to start. 

“You made it,” Foggy said. Matt would have been offended by the surprise in his friend’s voice if he hadn’t deserved it. He’d been a shitty friend and partner to Foggy and he knew it. “The ninjas go away or something?”

Matt cleared his throat. “No. Dex is dealing with them.”

Foggy sighed. Matt was very familiar with that sigh. It was the “Matthew Murdock, you are a fucking idiot” sigh. Recently, the sigh’s meaning seemed to have developed the second meaning of “Benjamin Poindexter, you are a fucking idiot”. Matt wasn’t entirely sure which of them this sigh was directed towards. Probably both him and Dex. 

It was a very eloquent sigh.

“So what I’m hearing is when we get Frank exonerated, your dart-slinging sidekick is going to be our next client?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

“That only works if it’s self-incrimination and you damn well know that,” Foggy said, but he had laughed, and Matt knew they were going to be okay.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Foggy hissed at Dex. Dex had shown up at the office that morning and hovered around Matt like an especially creepy shadow.

“I’m Matt’s bodyguard. The yakuza just put out a hit on him. Reward is five million.”

Foggy banged his head into his desk. 

After the third foiled assassination attempt, Foggy was forced to admit Dex wasn’t actually that bad to have around.

And if Dex and Karen had become fast friends, and if Matt was getting injured less often and seemed less strung-out, well. 

Foggy wasn’t going to be the one to kick Dex out.


End file.
